[Updated for May 2024 results. Help our FRM MPS research by submitting your Part 1 and Part 2 results!]
Not to be confused with pass rates, GARP does not release FRM minimum passing score information to candidates.
We understand GARP’s reasons for doing this, as FRM candidates should aim to acquire the necessary knowledge as a competent finance professional, rather than aiming for a specific score to beat since an exam’s difficulty can vary.
That said, we think knowing a range of passing score can be a useful reference point for FRM candidates to gauge their performance when doing practice questions.
In this article, we attempt to estimate the FRM minimum passing scores for the recent computer-based exams. More importantly, we explain why FRM passing scores are tricky to estimate (with some examples), and our estimate should be treated as such – a rough guide to help your FRM study preparation.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
Your FRM exam results are released only with a pass or fail grade, just like this example screenshot below for a Part 1 candidate:
Additionally, quartile data is provided as a guide to show your topic mastery relative to your peers taking the same exam. This can be useful information if you failed your exam, so you can concentrate your efforts on improving weaker topics if you decide to retake.
Here’s an example of a quartile data information found in the results PDF for a Part 2 topic (Market Risk Measurement and Management):
In the FRM results letter, candidates receive the following quartile information for each topic:
Topic mastery | Results percentile | Usually summarized as |
---|---|---|
Excellent | 76th – 100th percentile | 1 |
Good | 51st – 100th percentile | 2 |
Fair | 26th – 50th percentile | 3 |
Poor | 0 – 25th percentile | 4 |
For example, it may be common to hear FRM candidates’ declaring their Part 1 results as “1, 2, 3, 1”, which simply translates to the following results:
Note that quartiles simply breaks up a data set into 4 parts. This just shows your relative strength of the topic compared to other candidates taking the same exam. They cannot be used to make comparisons to other candidates’ overall score, as we can see in an example later, further below.
Having a wide range of 25% in each quartile makes it hard for comparison, since obtaining 76% and 100% both belong in the same quartile.
That’s a huge score difference for a topic, let alone 4-6 topics for the overall score for FRM candidates.
In addition to the limitations of the quartile statistic – and this may sound obvious – scoring well for higher weighted topics would have a greater positive impact on your overall score, and vice versa.
Here’s a quick recap of the latest topic weights for FRM Part 1 and Part 2:
FRM Part 1 Topics | Topic Weight |
---|---|
Foundations of Risk Management (FRM) | 20% |
Quantitative Analysis (QA) | 20% |
Financial Markets & Products (FMP) | 30% |
Valuation & Risk Models (VRM) | 30% |
FRM Part 2 Topics | Topic Weight |
---|---|
Market Risk Measurement & Management (MR) | 20% |
Credit Risk Measurement & Management (CR) | 20% |
Operation Risk & Resiliency (ORR) | 20% |
Liquidity and Treasury Risk Measurement and Management (LTR) | 15% |
Risk Management and Investment Management (IM) | 15% |
Current Issues in Financial Markets (CI) | 10% |
Let’s go through an example in the next section to see how all these 3 factors work when it comes to estimating an FRM minimum passing score.
Given the 3 factors discussed above, this means that there are many candidates that may have very similar quartiles, yet with some passing and some not, since their actual overall scores can vary widely.
As mentioned earlier, quartile data cannot be used to make comparison with other candidates’ overall score.
Let’s look at a simple example with Part 1 results to better clarify this:
Assuming an FRM Part 1 passing score of 55%, the example above shows that:
IMPORTANT: Just like our CFA passing score estimates, our FRM minimum passing score (MPS) estimates are just that – a best estimate of the passing score. Your individual MPS may also vary depending on exam version taken.
Based on our FRM results survey (see next section), here are the latest FRM Part 1 passing score estimates for Part 1 computer based exams, which seems relatively stable at 50-57%:
This means that on average, you’ll need to get 50-53 questions correct in FRM Part 1 exam (out of 100 questions) to just make the cut-off score.
That said, aiming for a score of 65% and above in practice exams is a good position to be in, since passing scores can vary by exam as they get recalibrated.
Thanks to our readers’ P2 results submission, we are able to increase our dataset distribution – and hence confidence – to provide estimates for FRM Part 2 minimum passing scores (MPS).
Here are the latest FRM MPS estimates for FRM Part 2:
This means that on average, you’ll need to get 40-43 questions correct in FRM Part 2 exam (out of 80 questions) to just make the cut-off score.
But that’s too close a margin to aim for typically, and a safer score is to target getting around 48 questions correct in your Part 2 practice exams to ensure a high chance of passing the actual exam.
In order to help all FRM candidates better, we would like to collect results data from our FRM readers who recently completed their exams, especially if you know your computer-based exam score.
It’s important to us that you share your results, fail or pass, so that we get a decent distribution of scores and are able to improve our FRM MPS predictions for you.
Please share this article with your friends to help us all out! Thank you 🙂
All you need to do is complete and submit this form below, and you will be notified once we have completed our FRM passing score analysis – thanks!
Thanks for sharing your FRM results with us for research, we will continuously update this article as more data comes in!
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View Comments
I gave my FRM 1 recently but my score didn't display after exam. Does it mean that i am definitely not clearing the exam?
Hi Rikhil, not at all. At the start of FRM CBT exams, some candidates reported that scores were shown after they submitted. Now it seems that the occurrence is less. It just makes our job of estimating the FRM MPS easier, but the more data we have, the better! Have you submitted your results?
Hi Sophie,
Please see the imgur link. The error message seems to have appeared when I selected another topic with the same quartile. And the submit button doesn't work after that (clicking it does nothing). Not sure whether it's only on my part though.
https://imgur.com/a/WaFz90M
Hi HL,
Thanks for spotting that error, would you mind trying again and see if the form is fixed?
Sorry about that, and really appreciate your submission!
Yup, it's fixed now. Thanks.
"Please don't select more than one response per column"? Shouldn't it be row? The quartiles are on the columns.
Hi HL, I don't see where that comment is on the form or the article, can you clarify?